“For me, the message was clear: film cuts and trims with savage brevity, where a shrug or an intercepted glance or a nervous pause between two words can lay bare the heart in ways written prose is far more nuanced and needs more time and space on the page. But the thing is, I couldn’t write silence. I couldn’t measure pauses and breaths and the most elusive yet expressive body language.”

The Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center would be the first dedicated Holocaust museum in the former Soviet Union. “Yet some in Ukraine question whether there is a need for a Holocaust memorial at Babi Yar, and not a few of the politically charged arguments that opponents are employing seem to be aimed squarely at making it go away.”

Rigel 9, a 1985 work with libretto by Le Guin and music by composer David Bedford, “tells a pretty classic space story. Three astronauts, named Anders, Kapper, and Lee, are sent to explore a strange world. After Anders goes off to collect plant samples and is kidnapped by extraterrestrials, Kapper and Lee argue over whether to rescue him or save themselves. In the end, Anders is faced with a difficult choice.” (includes sound clips)

Mulcahy established Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre as a major hub. He doubled the subscriptions and the theatre was packed every night. Mr. Mulcahy was fired in 1972 for criticizing the theatre’s leadership. At the time, he said it was because of “several irritating dissatisfactions I am undergoing with the theatre’s administration.” Mr. Mulcahy was the artistic director at five other Canadian theatres, most of them in smaller cities, from Fredericton, where he was director of the Playhouse, to the Press Theatre in St. Catharines, Ont. He was co-artistic director of the Shaw Festival’s first professional season. He also continued acting.

A dedicated stage and screen performer – and an African-American woman who earned degrees from Bard College, London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the Univ. of Minnesota in the 1960s – she won the Emmy for playing Matilda, the wife of Chicken George in the Alex Haley miniseries. She was nominated for a second Emmy for Backstairs at the White House and co-starred in the Oprah Winfrey production The Women of Brewster Place.

As part of these projects, we formed the Acoustronic ensemble, a mix of disabled and non-disabled musicians. They meet weekly to improvise, compose and perform using digital and acoustic instruments. A team comprising undergraduate, masters and PhD researchers works with the ensemble to investigate digital instrument-building and compositional and improvisational approaches in inclusive music settings.

“Too often products made for people with different physical, cognitive and sensory abilities have been ugly, feebly designed and stigmatizing. They’ve been developed not by designers but by engineers. And engineers haven’t always taken their cues from people who have disabilities, the ones who know best what they need and want.

“Instead of framing space as a relationship between objects and walls, the Japanese concept of space is about the relationships among people. By shifting this view, we can discover an interesting way of thinking about the spaces we make and use in everyday life—and the relationships that they create.”

“It’s true that individual Hollywood stars have more power than the average woman who finds out that she’s being underpaid. They can go public, knowing their stories will count as news and that they have fans who will rally to them. But the storm of coverage conceals an uncomfortable truth: For all their fame, women in the entertainment industry may have a harder time securing long-term pay equity than their counterparts in less glamorous industries.”

She took everything that might have hindered a lesser spirit and made it into a strength. As part of the New Wave in science fiction in the 1960s and ’70s, she and writers like Samuel R. Delany, J. G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick brought sophisticated prose style and contemporary political and sexual questions into a genre that had often felt artless and blunt.

It turned out that, when they were swearing, the intrepid volunteers could keep their hands in the water nearly 50 percent longer as when they used their non-cursing, table-based adjectives. Not only that, while they were swearing the volunteers’ heart rates went up and their perception of pain went down. In other words, the volunteers experienced less pain while swearing. It’s an easy experiment to try for yourself at home, or at a party if you have the right kind of friends.

Playwright Dan O’Brien: “When you or a loved one are gravely ill you can’t help but feel that now is undeniably, inescapably now. … When one is gravely ill, anything can happen, and sometimes does. In a play, anything can and always does happen. Must do. Every moment a potential calamity. We’ve all seen an actor go up on her lines. Disaster. Beautiful. You can hear a pin drop.”

“When it came to the show, we were encouraged to be who we were. But in ballet class, it was a different story. We weren’t allowed to express or present ourselves as we wanted; we couldn’t wear our hair in buns. Even what you wore to the airport was monitored.” Chase Johnsey talks with journalist Candice Thompson about why he left Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo after 14 years.

“The basic idea is that gender is created by the very words and actions that appear, superficially, to be simply describing it after the fact. … Gender is not a thing so much as a process by which patterns of language and action come to repeat themselves.” Will Fraker unpacks Judith Butler’s most famous idea.

“Fittingly, it shows him teaching a Copland symphony to students at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires, in 1990 – 50 years after he had studied there with Copland.” (includes video)

With France living through the rainiest January in years, the Seine’s water level is currently 17 feet, twice the normal level, and is expected to crest at around 20 feet by Friday. The Louvre has closed its Islamic art gallery and begun moving parts of its collection to higher floors, and the Musée d’Orsay and Orangerie have joined the Louvre in reducing some visiting hours.

“Since retiring from the Royal Ballet and founding Acosta Danza in 2015 with the aim of fusing classic and contemporary ballet, the 44-year-old artist has brought the work of many renowned foreign choreographers like American Justin Peck to his Caribbean island. Some have created new pieces for the company.”

The country’s Culture Ministry has revoked the distribution license for this English-language satire conceived and directed by Armando Ianucci – two days before the film’s release date and two months after culture minister Vladimir Medinsky insisted that it would be shown in Russia. After a special screening Monday night, one culture official called the film “blasphemous”; another described it as “vile, repugnant and insulting.”

Remembering Ursula K. Le GuinThere may be no contemporary writer who’s shaped me, and many of the authors of my generation, more than Ursula Le Guin, who died Monday. Even though she was nearing 90, Le Guin is the kind of person who seemed like she would live forever: … read moreAJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2018-01-24

Jessica Grahn’s research has focused on how and why the human body responds to music. She’s looked at Parkinson’s patients and found some very interesting therapeutic effects to cranking the music up that might help point to better lives for those like Diamond living with the disease, and even point to the evolutionary mystery of why music makes us move the way it does.

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Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more ... read more

“Men are wicked, and when I die I shall at least have the consolation of knowing that I have never rendered anyone a service.” Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (quoted in the Goncourt brothers’ ... read more

In Monday’s posting revisiting an early <em>Rifftides</em> piece about Tom Talbert (pictured ca. 1956), the staff was remiss in not including examples of Talbert’s music. Let’s remedy that. From his remarkable Bix ... read more

The thrill is gone. For several of the highest-estimated properties in the recent series of Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the “auction fever” of yesteryear has given way to single-bid transfers ... read more

The latest episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. In this ... read more

A scene from Larry Peerce’s 1969 film version of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw. The screenplay is by Arnold Schulman: (This is the latest in a series of arts- ... read more

Demands on time and resources have sidetracked plans for a new Monday Recommendation. Hey, stuff happens. The Rifftides staff’s solution is to reach back to the earliest days of this blog, and ... read more

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II appear as the mystery guests on What’s My Line? The host is John Daly and the panelists are Arlene Francis, Fred Allen, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Bennett Cerf. This episode ... read more

Denny Zeitlin, Wishing On The Moon, Live At Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola In New York City Pianist Zeitlin has recorded three albums with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson, beginning in ... read more

Cover and back page of four-page folio being published in a limited edition by Cold Turkey Press.John Bryan published so many underground papers and magazines over three decades — beginning in 1962 with renaissance, a ... read more

I don’t want to say anything bad about the royal wedding, which was lovely and inspiring. Or about Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the cellist who played so gorgeously. But one of the pieces he played was crazily ... read more

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Connecticut revival of The Will Rogers Follies. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Will Rogers is mostly forgotten now, but he used to be famous ... read more

William Talman, who played Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason, appears in a 1968 anti-smoking TV public-service announcement, the first one to feature a celebrity. A longtime smoker, Talman died of lung cancer six weeks after ... read more